A couple of years ago, I was helping to lead a teen retreat. I gave a talk that included some of my background with anxiety and depression. Two things happened after that. First, the teens on the retreat said that the talk made a significant impact on them. Second, I had a strong inclination toward [...]
"My Jesus, I believe that Thou art truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. I love Thee above all things, and I desire to possess Thee within my soul. Since I am unable now to receive Thee sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace Thee as being already there, and unite myself [...]
"Arm yourself like a man against the devil’s assaults. Curb your appetite and you will more easily curb every inclination of the flesh. Never be completely unoccupied, but read or write or pray or mediate or so something for the common good." -Thomas a' Kempis
"By his command to 'do this in remembrance of me' (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor11:25), he asks us to respond to his gift and to make it sacramentally present." -Pope Benedict XVI
"Third, true devotion to our Lady is holy, that is, it leads us to avoid sin and to imitate the virtues of Mary. Her ten principal virtues are: deep humility, lively faith, blind obedience, unceasing prayer, constant self-denial, surpassing purity, ardent love, heroic patience, angelic kindness, and heavenly wisdom." -St Louis de Montfort
"It is without doubt very humiliating for the good God to come into our hearts, but it is to find there a soul that He loves, that He has bought at the cost of His Blood." -St. John Vianney
"No work done with impetuosity and excitement was ever well done, and the old proverb 'Make haste slowly' is a good one." -St. Francis de Sales
"True, God is everywhere, but we have need for Him to draw near to us under sensible signs, and this is what He does in the Blessed Sacrament. Think, then, that He is there. That Presence is sweeter, is recalled more easily than the presence of the invisible, the impalpable Divinity. It is less easily [...]
"Have you no longer any sentiment of your sins? and, if you do see them, do you correct them? No, I am constantly falling back into the same faults, without paying any great attention to it. Then, are you already dead! You are without feeling! There is no state more frightful than that in which [...]
As to the effect, considered in each of the partakers. For, as Ambrose (Mag. Sent. iv, D, xi) says on 1 Cor. 11:20, this sacrament "avails for the defense of soul and body"; and therefore "Christ's body is offered" under the species of bread "for the health of the body, and the blood" under the [...]